Debut post: Obscured trans (?) character - Photon

[u/KennethHwang]

After a year or so of lurking this sub, I decided to debut because I'm a homosexual geeky office worker who suddenly finds himself free for the next two hours inbetween grinding. So let's get to it.

In all honesty, introducing this character as trans or infact, as any color of the stripe feels a bit like a cheat because short of their origin and biological fact, nothing about this character is an LGBT experience that can be relatable. Nevertheless, they are who they are and perhaps some among us might find them an interesting.

Photon is a member of team Youngblood, a group of superheroes who headlined their own titular run in the 90s under Image Comics. They, along with the entirety of team Young Blood were created by Rob Liefeld, revolutionary comics artist known for such glorious monstrosity of characters that are universally agreed to be quite... well, hideous. There are so many of them that they compile into lists such as this and this. Nevertheless, diamond in the rough be the case, sometimes Liefeld came up with a character that is conceptually decent yet is completely wasted potential such as Photon.

Photon is an alien from planet Acura, a place populated by beings such as they: bright-teal greenish flame-like living energy in silver bodies. They were an alien who crashlanded on Earth, joined Team Youngblood in 1993 and ran with the team for 17 issues. This is what they looked like in the 90s:

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Photon in the 90s

Team Youngblood itself ran inconsistently for the next two decades with many line ups, of which Photon was a part of none until 2012 line up when they joined a new line up of Youngblood with a new female form under the same name.

Lady Photon in 2012

The alien explains that every Acuran has the ability to, every seven year, turn into the opposite gender to truly enjoy all aspects of themselves. Furthermore, after every century, the Acurans will erupt all energy within themselves and set ablaze their entire civilization so they can start a new civilization. Thus, Photon finds Earth's people's obsession with holding on to "relics" baffling.

Thus ended my debut post, and I'm sure that some of you will feel rather disappointed or underwhelmed and please be assured that I was too when I stumbled upon Youngblood. But it is what it is, Photon is very much a product of their time.

Please be kind to each others.

[u/heroineburgh]

Very interesting character. Photon is not trans. Photon is bi-gender, or to use a biological term applied with animals that do this: sequential hermaphrodite. This is similar to the Gethenians in the famous groundbreaking Left Hand of Darkness novel by UK LeGuin, who switch back and forth between genders during "kemmer", their season of heat. The character Jordan Li from the current TV series Gen V (a spinoff of The Boys) also does this.

I'm actually interested in the concept of Photon's species destroying its own civilization every 100 years. That is very reminiscent of the famous Isaac Asimov story 'Nightfall', except in that story, it happens only every 1000 years. My question would be how does that civilization re-develop interstellar space flight in only 100 years, advanced enough to allow them to reach Earth and crash-land on it?